13 May 2017 May Newsletter

A heart-warming Initiative in Mtunthama

On May 4th and 5th, St Andrew’s Mtunthama offered its first deafness treatment project, with expert visiting audiologists from Lilongwe, in partnership with ‘Hear the World Foundation’. St Andrew’s arranged feeding for patients and their carers; Kamuzu Academy very kindly hosted the medical team of five specialists.

As you see, the Shrewsbury School Eye Clinic was called into versatile use once again as a base for this programme, along with a mobile audiology van.

Queue of Relief: people waiting to have their hearing tested in the sound proofed van, which carries specialist analytical equipment.

Some patients were treated, and others need hearing aids. The team will come for a follow-up visit between 28th – 30th June, and distribute free hearing aids to those identified as able to benefit from these during this visit, and will also see new patients.

Kondwani Banda cannot benefit from a hearing aid and needs a bone conductor. He is 23 years old from Vimphere Village, Kasungu. Bone conductors have to be imported and cost £200 – far beyond the means of the needy patients.

Can you help?

Can we find donations to help 6 patients identified in this campaign as needing bone conductors, and change 6 lives?

Can a Club or School or Church make this their task and target?

“Life would have meaning if I could hear”, says Kondwani Banda.

Elizabeth Gausi, 23, from Njobvu village, is also in need of a bone conductor.

All donations will be very gratefully received, and every penny will quickly get to work, with no UK costs or salaries, to help people with acute hearing needs. In addition to the bone conductors, your gifts are needed to promote and fund visits from the audiology team, and to offer other hearing aids and treatments to the patients. Thank you for anything you can offer.

Having established regular monthly eye surgery (now in its fourth year, with about 1500 patients having received surgery), we can change lives by regular work with audiologists, and thereby enable young people, especially, to be educated, independent and self-sufficient.

My dream? To establish a small hostel for deaf children adjacent to AMAO, with a resident sign teacher, enabling children to receive education, friendship and companionship, at our All Saints School.